3D printing: a replicator and teleporter in every home

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In a few years, 3D printers will become a consumer electronics commodity. Today you can buy a MakerBot Thing-O-Matic, “the latest in cutting edge personal manufacturing technology,” for $2,500. You can plug it into your computer via USB, load up some freely-available 3D modeling software, and print stuff; it really is that simple. The only real barrier to mass adoption is the initial purchase price, and the printing material itself isn’t cheap either.

Both of these costs will tumble in coming years, however. Printing — or additive manufacturing — techniques will improve. 3D printers will speed up, and the choice of colors and finishes will expand. For now these magical printers are just the plaything of prototypers, inventors, and gadgeteers, but sooner rather than later they will find a place in the home. To begin with they will be attached to a family computer, but it’s safe to assume that wireless versions that can sit on the kitchen worktop won’t be far behind.

In other words, in a few short years, every household will have a device that’s capable of printing any solid object, and even basic mechanical objects. You might need to use a 3D modeling application today, but with sites like Thingiverse providing huge repositories of ready-to-print models, it is becoming increasingly easy to simply download a 3D design, right click it, and press “create.”

The next step will be 3D printers that come pre-loaded with popular designs. Imagine pressing the “bowl” or “cup” button on the 3D printer in the kitchen, followed by the “fork” or “spoon” button. It would even work for larger objects like cutting boards and colanders and laundry baskets — and it would be easy enough to provide fairly extensive customization, too: a stripy cup, with colors of your choosing, a narrower fork, a bowl that is perfectly tapered to support and grip an unwieldy watermelon, and so on.

With our current grasp of additive manufacturing, we could do these things now.

Now imagine the possibilities of 3D printing if you combined it with other technologies. Photofly, for example, turns photos of real world objects into digital 3D models. You could use Photofly today to take photos of your favorite mug and make a perfect copy with a 3D printer — it would be expensive, but it’s possible. Next, there’s the 3D printer that uses chocolate instead of plastic. We’re certainly a little way away from printing a chicken dinner, but it should be possible in the not-so-distant future. It won’t happen for many years, but what if we can also integrate chip fabrication techniques like lithography and atomic layer deposition into a 3D printer?

Which brings us onto the topic of replication and teleportation. At some point in the future we will be able to push a few buttons on a machine and create almost anything, just like a Star Trek-style replicator. Today we are operating at a higher level, with plastic and chocolate and lumps of silicon, but it’s not too crazy to think that we’ll soon have machines that can rearrange atoms into molecules which can then be used to fashion food, drinks, weapons, vehicles — whatever, really. You can make anything if you know its molecular makeup.

But what about living things? Ultimately, a teleporter is just long-range replicator, but instead of creating a cup out of its constituent parts, you are putting together a living, breathing thing. Is a slug, with some 15,000 neurons, really any more complex than a silicon chip with billions of transistors? If we knew the exact molecular structure and genome of a slug, and we had the machinery to make those molecules out of raw materials like carbon, oxygen, and a handful of trace elements, could we create a slug with a 3D printer-cum-replicator? And if we can create a slug, why can’t we create a fruit fly with 100,000 neurons, or a cockroach with a million? Where do we draw the line at replicating real things? Can we draw a line?

Then there is the problem of… excess matter, as chillingly highlighted by Christopher Nolan’s masterpiece The Prestige. To teleport something, not only must it be recreated in a faraway place, but it must also cease to exist in its original location — otherwise it is merely replication, and the world would get very messy if we simply started replicating living things. In the case of a slug, could we “melt down” the original slug into its constituent molecules? Could we do that with a chair or table? Could we do it with a complex animal, like a human? If I teleport myself to another planet, I certainly don’t want my other body hanging around, that’s for sure.

And at this point, the conversation can either go one of two ways. We can discuss the concept of souls and spirits and whether a machine that can create life, or merely fashion molecules into a lifeless facsimile — or we can just leave it here and cross that slippery, sophist causeway when we get there.

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